


Lilacs Out of the Dead Land

by ChellaC



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Amputation, Angst and Humor, Bonding, Cultural Differences, Dad max, Dysfunctional Family, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Hero Worship, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Mom Furiosa, Multi, Nux Lives, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Slit Lives, War Boys Showing Affection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5957074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChellaC/pseuds/ChellaC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After leaving the Citadel, Max finds himself still entangled with the lives of those he left behind. While Furiosa rebuilds their new home, Wives and War Boys alike must find a way to meet in the middle so they might both survive. Or: Nux and Slit come back to find the Citadel not as they remember it, and recover from their injuries while the Wives deal with their own past as well. When it comes down to it, everyone in the Wasteland is looking for the same thing, and this unlikely group begins to find it in each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lilacs Out of the Dead Land

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from a line in T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland". I hope you enjoy this story, it's my first time writing for Mad Max. I really love all the characters and they'll all be getting attention in this story as I think the ways they interact with each other are so interesting and dynamic. Any ratings or reviews are welcomed, I'd love to hear what you think or any suggestions you have for what you'd like to see. Thank you!

     The world shook and Max couldn’t tell if it was his eyes in their sockets or if the planet really were trembling. Either way it was all getting away from him. The earth rattled beneath the wheels, thrummed against Max’s feet, while up above the blue sky hovered. He thought sometimes he might float on up there, when the shaking got like this, got into his teeth and his blood. Other times he didn’t think at all. Just felt it, waited for it to fly apart, for him to fly apart, whichever was easiest and came first.

He’d left Furiosa at the Citadel. He’d left part of his mind at the Citadel. The whole world was back at the Citadel and here the sand and sky and wind were all. Not all. There it was, a flash up ahead. The War Rig, its toppled carcass still smoldering, burnt out black skeleton smoking and waiting for scavengers.

Max stopped before it, idling the car he’d taken, an old white model coated brown with dirt and rust like War Boy paint. The felled creature lay on its side, death fumes leaking out of it, heat shimmering over the cooking metal. Max walked closer.

Fire had engulfed the cab, nothing to salvage there. The back was twisted and warped from the crash, but if he could find a way inside there could be parts worth taking. If he was honest with himself, he hadn’t come for parts. He’d just wanted to see it. There wasn’t a whole lot else to look at out in the wastes.

Max sighed and squinted at it, leaned back to take it in. Smelled like something cooking. War Boys, somewhere in all that wreckage, burning up, Rictus, flaming engine pinning him somewhere, unrecognizable. Max drew closer to the cab. If the girls had been with him, he wouldn’t have. Not to spare them- they’d seen more than their fair share, didn’t need him to tell them not to look. No, to deny how strong of a hold everything ruined and morbid had over him. He’d seen crashes, stopped some nights beside smoking wrecks and watched them burn themselves clean and black, seen what a roll or a smack against a steering wheel did to a body. He couldn’t ever look away. Felt in some deep down part of himself a responsibility to watch, to see what got left behind.  _ Look _ , the wastes whispered.  _ Look at this, Max. This is what waits for you. If you’re looking for something out here, it’s this- it’s all there is to find. _

So he went over to the cab and he looked and saw the warped metal, the blackened seats. He saw nothing organic.

He looked over his shoulder and half expected to see the kid grinning behind him. Thrown when the cab hit the canyon, then. 

Something shifted behind him. It might’ve been the slide of a boot on the sand, the soft thump as someone opened a car door. Max whirled around. A man stood beside his car, sliding something into the backseat. He froze when he saw Max watching him and slowly rose, closing the door and stepping to the driver’s door. Max pulled his gun.

The other man, a War Boy, grinned, and Max recognized him. Hard to forget a grin full of staples.

“Hey. Hey, Razor Cola. Bloodbag. Put the gun down and nobody’s gotta die. Not right now anyway.”

Max raised an eyebrow. He looked the man up and down. He was shaking, leaning heavily on Max’s car to stay upright. A gash above his right eye leaked a steady ooze of blood he kept blinking away. He had his right arm tucked close to his chest, and even from yards away Max could see the bone peeking from his forearm, the blood smeared from the wound to his elbow.

“I’m gonna get in this car,” the War Boy said. “It ain’t yours anyway. It's Citadel property, and I’m just gonna take it back where it belongs. No hard feelings, nothing personal. You killed the Immortan, I leave you to the sand. Let’s call it even.”

Max kept the Glock on the man’s skull and tuck a step forward. With a grunt, he flicked his wrist right, gesturing the man away from the car.

“That loaded?” the War Boy asked. “Go ahead. Try to kill me. If that crash couldn’t do it, you think you can?”

Max shot the ground by the man’s foot. The sound seemed to break whatever force of will had kept the man standing, and he crumpled to his knees beside the car. Max walked over, holding the man’s glaring eyes. He leveled the gun with the man’s skull, jerked his head right. The man shuffled that way on his knees, never taking his gaze off Max. He spat at his feet, and put himself in front of the backseat door.

“What’ve you got back there?” Max asked.

“I told you if you put that thing down nobody had to die,” the man panted. His bottom lip was cracked and bleeding. “Well, he’s almost drained by now. You happy? When’s it gonna be enough? A hundred, a thousand, all of us War Boys bleeding out for you old dogs, getting blown all to bits so some old mangy kook can sit up in the shade with his women and his aqua cola? Yeah, they all think we can’t see them, but I do. I see it. So why am I out here getting blown to bits and drinking guzzoline? I ain’t no immortan and I ain’t got no shade or aqua cola or hardly any skin left, just got this car and got a driver and got somebody saying I won’t want for nothing when I’m dead. You try it, bloodbag, you try hearing the bloodbuzz all day, keeping you up all night, and then turn your back when somebody says, I’ve got this under control, you just follow me and you won’t have to hurt much longer. I don’t know who screwed us all over but they screwed us up real bad, you and me both, what do you say to that? Huh? We’re dying out here, you and me, because you ain’t looking out for me none and I sure as hell ain’t looking out for you, and somebody’s got it in for the both of us. Just can’t win. Just can’t win, no way no how.”

The man grinned lazily and slumped against the door. He was spent. Max didn’t mind letting people talk. When they had the fever light in their eyes, like this one did, the talking was usually all they had left in them, and once that was laid out they just rolled over and that was it.

Max opened the door and froze. Nux was back there bleeding all over his backseat. He looked back at the man sitting on the hot sand, watching him like a hawk.

“Don’t you do nothing,” the man rasped. He was heatsick, Max could tell. His eyes had gone glossy and wavered over Max’s face. “Don’t you do nothing to him. Gotta get us to the Citadel. He needs some blood, some chrome. Good as new.”

Max looked again at Nux. His left pant leg was soaked with blood, the fabric burnt almost entirely away, most of the lower leg missing. Bone was visible beneath the charred skin, yellow fat too. His foot lay sideways on the seat, held on by stringy bits of flesh.

The wastes started up in his ears again, whispering around in his head.

“Get in the car,” Max said.

The man stared up at him, expression unchanged. Max nodded his head at the passenger’s side. 

“Get in,” he said again.

“We going somewhere?” the man said, and he was someplace else that Max couldn’t see.

Max grunted in agreement. The sun dipped low and lit the world orange and it shook down around them as he drove back towards the Citadel.

The man slumped in his seat and was clearly on the brink of passing out, but he kept his half-lidded eyes on Max the whole drive. He mumbled to Nux, who might’ve been dead by the looks of him.

“Should be you up here driving, Nuts,” he said. “This old feral behind the wheel...nothing shine about it.”

When they arrived Furiosa herself ran to meet them, some of the little War Boys, the pups, at her heels.

“Max,” she said when he got out of the car. “I thought you were leaving. What’s this about?”

The man opened the door and slid to the ground, dragging himself up by the handle on the backseat and yanking it open. He grabbed Nux under the shoulder with his good arm and started to drag him out of the car.

“The circus,” Max grunted, before rushing over and putting a hand on the War Boy’s chest, holding him back. “Stop,” he said.

“Get off’m,” the man said, tugging Nux. 

“You drag him around like that and he’ll fall apart,” Max said. It was true. Max could now see the gash on Nux’s abdomen, seeping through the torn cloth the man had tied around it.

“He’s fine, ain’t you, Nux,” the man said. “Tell him you know how to keep your guts where they belong, eh, Nux?”

“He found Nux?” Furiosa said, coming around the car. She saw the limp boy and immediately straightened, eyes going steely. She looked better than when Max had left, most of the blood gone from her face, but her clothes were still stained and she smelled of grease and heat.

“Slit,” she snapped. “Put him down. Boys, run and get the tarp. Run!”  
The pups sprinted towards the Citadel. While they waited, Furiosa inspected the damage. 

“He’s breathing,” she said.

“What a relief,” Slit said. “Hadn’t noticed.” Furiosa glared at him, but he was too heatsick to be intimidated.

“We need to get him to the Vuvalini,” Furiosa said, watching the pups race back towards them and snatching the tarp from them. “Max, take the end of this. Try to get all of him on there.”

“The Voovalley?” Slit said, hurrying after Furiosa and Max as they carried Nux between them. He grabbed the middle of the tarp to help hold it steady. “What the hell’s that? Take him to the Organic Mechanic. Glory, just stitch him back together, would you, and quit talking about it!”

“Who’s this guy again?” Max asked Furiosa.

“Nux’s lancer,” Furiosa said.

“Sure am,” Slit said. “But who’re you, that’s the question. What’d you do to him, huh?”

“Pretty sure crashing the War Rig did this to him,” Max said.

“Never would’ve happened if you hadn’t brainwashed him,” Slit said.

Max snorted, and Furiosa glared at the both of them. “Hold it steady, quit shaking him,” she said. 

They carried him inside, where the girls stood waiting to see what was going on. Cheedo cried out when she saw Nux, and Capable’s eyes widened as she clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Glory,” said Toast under her breath. “Is he…”

“Go tell medical to be ready when we get there,” Furiosa said. 

The Dag took off, and the other girls followed, only Capable hanging back to walk alongside them. She brushed her fingers against Nux’s as she walked.

“Who the hell are you?” Slit said, squinting at her. “Haven't I seen you before? You one of the Wives?”   


“I’m Capable, actually,” Capable said.

“Of what?” Slit said.

“Ignore him,” Furiosa said, and they brought Nux into the shop, setting him down on a makeshift cot.

One of the Vuvalini was already there and had cleared the operating room of all the other War Boys and Wretched she’d been attending too.

“What happened?” she said.

“Crashed,” Slit said. “He’s been out a few hours. I tried to tie a tourniquet, but I don’t know about that so much. You don’t...it’s not that bad. You don’t have to scrap him.”

“We aren’t scrapping him,” Furiosa said. “Now all of you get out. Not you, you two stay,” she said, taking Toast and the Dag by their wrists.

Slit slid down against the wall. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here. Better not try anything funny. I seen that in here before, don’t wanna see it again.”

“Someone get that boy hooked up,” the Vuvalini said, cutting the pant leg off of Nux up to his thigh. “He’s dehydrated.”

Slit’s vision became dim. He wondered if at last his eyesight was shot for good. Then he didn’t wonder anything, didn’t feel the needle slide under his skin. He drifted.


End file.
